Selective call receivers having an alphanumeric display for displaying received messages and a memory for storing the received messages are well-known in the art. Such receivers typically have had a limited amount of memory for storing message characters, e.g., memory for 2,000 characters. Consequently, received messages could not be retained indefinitely, because the messages would accumulate over time and overflow the limited amount of memory. Even as new selective call receivers are designed and constructed with larger amounts of memory, there is still a limit to the amount of information that can be stored.
Conventional selective call receivers have offered a user a limited choice regarding the retention of received messages in memory. Typically the user has been able either to retain a received message in its entirety or to delete a received message in its entirety. Also typically, there has not been a way to organize retained messages.
Still, some portions of a received message, e.g., a sender's name and telephone number, might be far more important for the user to retain than some other parts of a received message. Currently, a user must consume memory sufficient to store a whole message, even though the user is interested in only a small part of the information contained therein. The ultimate result is memory waste.
Thus, what is needed is a way of retaining the interesting parts of a received message without having to retain the uninteresting parts. What is also needed is a way of organizing the retained message parts to facilitate recalling them at a future time.